Wednesday, 22 June 2011

Joe Cornish, director of the fun British sci fi actioner ATTACK THE BLOCK is giving a talk at a screening for BAFTA. They say:

"Writer/Director Joe Cornish's Attack the Block is one of the year's biggest
home-grown hits, a brilliantly inventive south-London set sci-fi horror
where 'inner city meets outer space', as the tagline memorably puts it.
We're delighted to welcome the filmmaker ahead of tonight's screening to
discuss some of the movies which influenced him, from the work of directors
John Carpenter and Walter Hill, to E.T. and action-packed 80s extravaganzas
such as the first part of tonight's double bill, Die Hard."

So if you've not caught up with the movie yet or you want to listen to the man about what it takes to make a sci fi blockbuster then head over to the BAFTA what's on board and look up July 30th.

Russell T Davies has promised on the BBC news website that Cardiff remains the spiritual home of TORCHWOOD despite the fact that it is now part-financed by the Starz Channel from the USA and he himself is living in LA.

Considering that Children Of Earth was one of the best things on TV that year and made up for two decidedly lacklustre seasons by blowing us away, we're willing to take anything that RTD has to say on the matter as gospel truth.

We're willing to bet, however, that the so-called gay agenda will be referenced/continued and someone will be a bad/abusive or absent father.

Tuesday, 21 June 2011

The lastest episode of the time travel as life therapy show from Canada showed on E4 on Sunday.

Life is turning around once again for Erica. Her mother's cancer has been successfully treated and her business is on the way back, but Adam has decided to stay with the woman that a vision of a different life told him would be his wife. When he finds it hard to deal with the prospect of a full relationship, Dr Tom sends him back to his early life.
Our parents screw us up, but we are not our parents. That's the message and it's obvious from the very moment that Adam is transported back into a row between his mother and father. It's cereal box psychology that is only saved by the powerful performance from Adam Fergus when his character breaks down under Dr Tom's pressure.
Everything else has the spectre of soap opera hanging over it. A glossy, well-produced soap opera to be sure, but a soap opera all the same. This is disappointing after last week's episode and the dilemma of a man who has seen an alternate reality and is now caught in the trap of whether he should make it happen is barely addressed.

Following the death of Lord Stark, everyone pauses to consider the new landscape. The war is running against the Lannisters, the young King is refusing to be commanded by his elders and in another land witchcraft has dramatic results.
It was the big finale, except that wasn't.There was no climax here, no conclusion, no bringing together of the plot strands into some sort of satisfactory whole. Instead, the plot continued to meander on, there were more meaningless conversations and patience was stretched to snapping point. The end result of ten hours of the most vaunted fantasy series ever was an astounding 'is that it?'.
The show tried to pull things out of the fire (literally) with the birth of Daenerys' dragons, but by that point it hardly mattered. Faith must be hugely high in the continuation of the show since no effort was made to wrap up even one single storyline or present a cliffhanger. The story didn't come to an end, it just sort of ... stopped.

About Me

I am English, mid forties and a recent widower with two children and no time to, well pretty much anything these days.
More pertinently, I write and the fruits of these labours are available as ebooks on the likes of amazon, ibooks, smashwords and lulu.com
My main area of interest is science fiction and fantasy with a side order of supernatural horror. That's what I watch and read and write. I am a geek and proud of it. In fact, I also run a website called the Sci Fi Freak Site reviewing genre TV shows (it being pretty hard to get to the cinema any more).
I am also a regular contributor (some might say heckler) of the kindle forum on amazon.co.uk. It was there that it was suggested that every writer must have a blog, so here it is.
Blame them.